Optimal Input Before Outputting

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Re: Optimal Input Before Outputting

Postby Cainntear » Sat Sep 04, 2021 3:30 pm

german2k01 wrote:If we have to "quantify" this "optimal input" in terms of hours spent for listening and reading or if you have any other metric to quantify it - please state so. As a ballpark figure, when learners are supposed to be really comfortable with outputting?

If we have to quantify it then we're totally stuffed, because its impossible to quantify.

What you'd end up with is just an Emperor's nose.
You can't get an accurate answer by averaging a whole pile of guesses.

Even the people who most actively push "silent periods" in learning won't quantify it, and there's got to be a reason for that.
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Re: Optimal Input Before Outputting

Postby Cainntear » Sat Sep 04, 2021 3:46 pm

RyanSmallwood wrote:I think the overall philosophy is to avoid inventing stuff where you have gaps in your knowledge, and to use output to find your gaps and learn the correct form right away.

This is exactly it.

I personally think the solution to that problem is just better structured teaching -- don't put learners in the position where they are forced to make mistakes to get through.

This is a problem that's been studied in immersive schooling using subject tuition through the language -- if you put a complex task in front of language learners, they won't have enough attentional resources to deal with language... and if they don't attend to language, they learn errors.
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Re: Optimal Input Before Outputting

Postby sirgregory » Sat Sep 04, 2021 4:18 pm

Given that you are living in Germany I would think "avoiding output" while there would be a big wasted opportunity. Why not use it as much as you can? I can understand delaying output if you have no immediate practical need to use the language, but I don't see why you'd do that if you know basic German and are surrounded by natives.
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Re: Optimal Input Before Outputting

Postby german2k01 » Sat Sep 04, 2021 5:40 pm

Given that you are living in Germany I would think "avoiding output" while there would be a big wasted opportunity. Why not use it as much as you can? I can understand delaying output if you have no immediate practical need to use the language, but I don't see why you'd do that if you know basic German and are surrounded by natives.


Yes. I am doing that. Sometimes on purpose, I use a different word while dealing with a shopkeeper. But a business transaction is so limited in its scope to improve your fluency. I am thinking about creating pre-set questions so that I can ask native German speakers. My student hostel is located in a retirement home so in the evening I get to see and meet with old German ladies. Off the cuff, I do not think I can yet formulate sentences fluently. I am focusing on accumulating as much input as possible through reading and listening.
I think I have done enough "immersion" I mean I am into 17 months of nonstop hearing and reading German. Maybe it is high time to introduce "shadowing" of television shows so that I may have a better stock of phrases at my disposal.
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Re: Optimal Input Before Outputting

Postby lusan » Sat Sep 04, 2021 6:16 pm

RyanSmallwood wrote:I think the overall philosophy is to avoid inventing stuff where you have gaps in your knowledge, and to use output to find your gaps and learn the correct form right away. I haven't tried learning with a tutor, but if I got one, I'd probably want them to speak most of the time, and I'd just give brief replies to indicate my comprehension or ask them to repeat or explain stuff in new words, and try forming my own sentences when I felt ready and get corrections, maybe record the session and add any especially useful parts to SRS.



I do the exact opposite. I talk most of the time and the tutor write down all my errors. Then I create Anki cards with the correct output. If I want to check my comprehension, I prefer watching dubbed films, podcast, etc.

I am very happy with this approach. It is very challenging if not having the basic done. But I wonder the sense of using un italki tutor before reaching a B1 comprehension level. Well... maybe pronunciation... grammar, voc, reading? I prefer the books.
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Re: Optimal Input Before Outputting

Postby sfuqua » Sun Sep 05, 2021 5:02 am

Speak when you need to speak, not before. The longer you get input before you speak the easier the step will be, but there is nothing wrong with speakeing early also.

In both of the languages that I speak well, there was a moment when I decided that I was going to talk, and I did, with many errors of course. When I tried, my progress was rapid, so I guess I waited long enough. :D

Forgot to add this earlier: For me, it was about 3 months after I started studying when I started talking. In both cases, I was living pretty much totally immersed during the time I studied.
Last edited by sfuqua on Sun Sep 05, 2021 2:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Optimal Input Before Outputting

Postby rdearman » Sun Sep 05, 2021 8:58 am

Cainntear wrote:

You can't get an accurate answer by averaging a whole pile of guesses.


You have just invalidated the entire mathematics discipline of statistics. :D which is based on the work of an 1800 mathematician who wrote "The wisdom of crowds"

:D :D
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Re: Optimal Input Before Outputting

Postby Iversen » Sun Sep 05, 2021 11:15 am

I like to get to the level where I can read things fluently before I say anything, and that means that I have to build a decent vocabulary and learn some grammar first - and I don't need a teacher for that. Of course I also need to hear the language in question, first to pick up the sounds (and the tone of the language in general), later also to be able to listen freely to Youtube videos or TV-programs, but for me the need to understand the spoken language fluently comes after the need to be able to read fluently.

As for output I have written somewhere that there really are four stages, not two or three: 1) being able to construct written sentences, 2) initiating silent thinking, 3) becoming able to write freely - OK, with some dictionary lookups plus green grammar sheets within reach, but .. 4) fluent speaking as the last hurdle to be overcome. In this scheme I don't include the casual use of a few politeness terms and other words during travels, which can happen even before stage 1, but I don't count that as proper language learning because I can do it even in languages I don't intend to study.

You may have noticed that I don't refer to teachers or mentors. I do see the point in concentrated one-to-one meetings where I can get some general errors corrected and pick up solutions for some of my lexical or idiomatic weaknesses, but the main point would be training - and training is only relevant when there is something to train. And classroom teaching ... nope - I left that abhorrent stage more than forty years ago and I have no inclination to return to that kind of pedagogics.

And I don't try to quantify my input, because I know that it is impossible.
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Re: Optimal Input Before Outputting

Postby Hash » Sun Sep 05, 2021 12:27 pm

1 hour a day for 6 months is not enough. You should get at least 3 hours a day of input for one or two years (it depends on how distant the L2 from your L1)
After 1000-2000 hours of spoken input, you can start speaking with confidence. If you try to speak before that, you will have the risk of fossilizing bad pronunciation and grammar errors.
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Re: Optimal Input Before Outputting

Postby Cainntear » Sun Sep 05, 2021 12:34 pm

rdearman wrote:
Cainntear wrote:

You can't get an accurate answer by averaging a whole pile of guesses.


You have just invalidated the entire mathematics discipline of statistics. :D which is based on the work of an 1800 mathematician who wrote "The wisdom of crowds"

:D :D

Ach, not at all -- just established limitations, and only ones that were already well-established. The Wisdom of Crowd wasn't wrong per se, just overoptimistic.
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